Let's Get Ready to Rumble
by aRegularJo
Summary: Don drafts his fantasy team, has a few conversations, and can't shake the feeling that everything's about to change. Takes place during ep 2x01. Pre-Don/Sloan, if you squint and pray.


Hey all! First Newsroom fic here, though I've been bouncing around for about ten years now. This was intended to be a sparky interlude between Don and Sloan during the fantasy football draft in 2x01, but then I start working through where both of them were and where everyone else (Charlie, Mac, Will, and Maggie) and it got a little more meditative. So this is what I ended up with! It's take place between beginning scenes of 2x01, the night of Aug. 23, 2011, when Sloan, Will, Charlie, and other ACN staffers are gathering for the draft.

All characters obviously not mine. A few lines were lovely recycled from the West Wing, just like the real Newsroom.

* * *

"Don!" Charlie yells, taking the stairs two at a time. Don winces. Charlie probably shouldn't be moving that fast. He's getting, you know, up there.

"You heading to the draft?" Don asks, waiting for his boss.

"Yeah. Listen, I wanted to tell you about September 11th."

"Don't need to tell me about it, Charlie, I was living in Little Italy. I know plenty about it, thanks."

"Yes, I wanted to give you a history lesson on September 11th, 2001. No, smartass. I wanted to talk the anniversary coverage."

"Mac and Will seemed to have it locked down; everything OK?"

"No, it's not. Will's going to get sick." One look at Charlie confirms exactly what Will will be coming down with.

"The Reese thing?"

"Yeah. The Reese thing."

"He could fight it, he could apologize to Leona."

"It wasn't Leona's call. It was mine."

"Oh. Okay. So is Mac still producing?"

"Yes, Mac's still producing. But it'll be all Elliot and Sloan, instead of the two of them in supporting roles, and you're the producer they both trust more, so you're going to need to take a more hands-on role. Plus there are some bridges that you'll need to repair. Guiliani pulled out, for instance."

"Sloan doesn't trust me more than she trusts Mac," he protests. Which is probably the wrong thing to focus on right now, since he's more than a little paranoid of looking partial to Sloan, and more than a little confused about Sloan - who is still not _actually_ speaking to him, despite the fact that she's filling in for Elliot and he's in her ear _every night _- in general.

Charlie looks like he's beginning to figure out something he _really _doesn't want to know, and shakes his head slightly. "Whatever. You know both of them and their voices, so you'll be co-EPing instead of just producing some segments, and you'll run the control room during the broadcast."

Now _that _is a surprise. "Charlie, I'm really okay with Mac running the room."

"Did you not just hear me? You're the producer with the most experience with both of them, combined. Mac hasn't taken either of them through a full show and you've done it with both. Mac has most stuff already under control so you'll need to coordinate with her. She's directing the show, you're conducting the orchestra night of."

"Does Mac know this is happening?"

"Not yet. I'll tell her before she leaves today," Charlie looks at him appraisingly. "Sloan's been doing a good job at ten. No rants in Japanese so far, anyways."

He stares back. "Yeah. She's doing well. Have you told her that yet?"

"In not so many words. Sloan and I have a bond, you know. We're both nerds."

"Yeah, I don't even know," Don says, pushing open the doors to the conference room where they're meeting. There's a small crowd already there - Sloan, loading a PowerPoint (of course); Tess, wearing a Ravens cap; Gary, bored already; Will, looking sullen; Neal, looking absolutely lost; and Elliot, Skyped in through Sloan's MacBook and looking a little sunburnt. "Elliot! How're the Bahamas?"

"Hot," Elliot smiles.

"Yeah, it looks like you need a little zinc there," Charlie says, scratching his own nose. "Sabbith, we ready to go?"

"No, still waiting on about half the group. Then I've prepared a short presentation outlining rules and procedures, and then we'll be good to go."

"Did you know Sloan's parents are proud of her for being named commissioner?" Charlie informed Will.

"Of course they are. It's the natural next step to her term as class treasurer."

"Multiple terms. And you're on, McAvoy," Sloan retorts, as she taps away on a laptop.

Will cocked his head. "Sloan, who is your favorite quarterback?"

"Aaron Rodgers is going to have a great season, plus he went to Berkeley too, which is pretty dreamy."

"Not what I asked, I asked who you _liked_ best. When was the last time you went to a football game?"

She shrugs, unashamed. "I saw one on the TV at a bar last winter."

Don's jaw drops. "Do you even have a favorite team?"

She flushes a little, annoyed, that he is daring to talk to her about non-work things, though he's the only one to notice, he's pretty sure. No matter how socially awkward she says she is, Sloan is no fool. She's private, so she's sure as hell not going to make a scene in front of anyone, particularly Will and Charlie. So she answers, "Yeah, the team I'm going to put together to kick your teams' collective asses."

"Why are you even doing fantasy?" He demands. This is _sacred_.

"You know what fantasy football is? Predictive analysis of the likelihood of various statistical factors interacting. It's a big fat math problem! You know what I'm really good at?"

"Big fat math problems?" He questions, smirking. You have to hand it to her. She really is a goddamned certifiable genius.

"Exactly! Didn't you read _Moneyball_?"

"No but I'm excited to see the movie," he turns to Tess. "Are the Ravens actually your favorite team, or do you just like purple?"

"Well. My dad's been their defensive coordinator for eleven years. So I've been to a few games," she readjusts her hat huffily and he figures he probably deserves that.

"So we're all going to lose to Tess and Sloan," he says. "Why are we here, again?"

"Because we want your money," Tess smiles. As he's beginning to realize just how much money he's going to lose this fall, Martin, Herb, Jake, Joey, Lonny, and Dave, Tyler, and Danny, from his show, finally walk in.

"Great. Now we can get started," Sloan says, motioning at them to sit and flipping on a crazily-well-done PowerPoint. "Alright, everyone, welcome to the ACN News 2011 Fantasy Football League. Before we get started, I would just like to say that I'm your _commissioner_. I'm not your mother, I'm not your girlfriend, and I'm not your middle-school art teacher that you had a crush on, so I'm not going to put up with bullshit. Breaking news is never an excuse when you've got a trade deadline. We're going to go over some rules and procedures quickly, then we're going through the draft. I'd also like to remind everyone that six of us have to be on the air at 10, so make your picks and don't be a pansy." She shoots Will and Charlie a look, as if daring them to challenges her, but they don't so she continues. "Great. Now, logistics. We're going to be using the ACN Sports Fantasy Football tracker, which you should have all already used to set up an account …"

Fifty minutes later, he's got a fantasy team and a distinct feeling that they are all going to lose to Tess and Sloan, despite the fact that he got Drew Brees as his QB. Sloan slides into the desk at 9:57, and Tammy immediately starts futzing with her makeup, not that she needs any of that.

"Ready to go?" he asks into the headset as he watches her hair get fluffed. "You're leading with —"

"The earthquake. I know. Ya think?" she winds her mic up her shirt.

"No need to snarky, Goodell," he says. "Don't go on a power trip now."

She rolls her eyes, demurring to continue to rise to the bait. "Is the script all loaded?"

"Script and graphics are a go. You've got Libya and the hurricane to fill the A-block."

"And drones don't make it in till the B-block. Got it," she says, as the cameraman begins the countdown.

And they were off, with a whole frustrating hour in which Sloan barely needed his direction and didn't speak to him otherwise. She's riveting. At the end of the hour, when he says, "Good show," she replies with a terse, "Thanks," before leaving for the newsroom. He sighs, slides off his headset and tosses it down, and follows.

Sloan's disappeared - he thinks he sees the door to her office swinging shut - so he heads into his own office to grab his coat and head home. He doubts there's time for any romantic mugging or bowling tonight, but a movie and sex sounds pretty damn good.

He's almost out of the newsroom when Mac yells, "Hey, Keefer!" _Fuck_. She only calls him that when she is really not happy. He turns, slowly.

"Hey," he says, internally bracing himself. "Did Charlie have a chance to talk to you about 9/11?"

"What about it?" she asks, momentarily confused.

"Nothing. He just needs to talk with you about the coverage plans."

"Oh. Alright. No, I wanted to talk to you about the Romney bus."

"I heard about Ben," he says. "I've been in that hotel. No way he could have even remotely stuck that landing." He smirks at the thought of the 2004 campaign. One of the best fucking experiences of his life.

"Yeah, so he's out for a few weeks," she says.

"Who'd you send to replace him?"

"Jim," she says, her face a mix of concern, anger, and annoyance.

"Jim Harper, Jim?" he clarifies, because that would be a stupid loss.

"Yes."

"You sent your senior producer to capture feed that nobody will use of town hall meetings in Manchester?"

"He wanted to go!" she says. "What was I supposed to do?"

"Overrule it! You're his boss," he reminds her.

"He threatened to quit. I looked at him and I believed him."

"He threatened to quit, huh?" He feels like he's missing a piece of the puzzle but has already solved it anyways.

"Right. And I'm asking you, what else could I have done?" he realizes that she's actually asking, for advice, not out of exasperation.

He takes a minute. "I don't think there was anything else," he admits. Because he doesn't think so.

"Alright then. Jerry Dantana is coming up to cover for him. Have you worked with him before? I've only spoken to him over the phone."

"A few times. He's a little … hawkish."

"On the wars?"

"And other things," he says, but doesn't elaborate. Truthfully, Dantana's harder to work with than even Mac or Will - even when they were going hardest on their quixotic 'do the news right' crusade last year, they had nothing on Dantana's level of stubbornness and skepticism. He's not sure it's going to be a good add to the mix, especially with Sloan's increasing interest in terrorism and Will getting booted from the 9/11 memorial coverage. But he's not going to bring that up.

"Alright then," Mac says, rocking on her heels like she's about to leave. "Sloan did a good job tonight. You two work well together."

"Yeah," he says dully, checking his bag for his keys so he doesn't need to make eye contact.

"Is everything alright with you two?" Mac asks, cocking her head to the side.

"Why wouldn't it be?" he challenges.

"I don't know," Mac says, though she looks like she has plenty of ideas. "You should get going. Maggie's probably waiting up."

"Yeah," he says. "I should go. G'night."

"Night. Oh, wait!" she calls as he's walking out.

"Yeah?"

"Charlie wants more cross-network synchronization. I said I'd start coming to your news meetings. Can you come to ours? The first of the day is at 11."

He sighs. That is automatically a 12-hour day. Not that it matters. "Fine. I'll start tomorrow."

"Thanks Don. G'night."

Of course, his day isn't over yet. As soon as he rounds the corner to the elevator bank, he sees Sloan standing there, in a black razorback tank, jeans, and sandals. Quelling the urge to bang his head against the wall, repeatedly, he simply approaches. "Hey," he says. "Heading home?"

"Yeah," she says. "Long day."

He nods. "It's not every day you get evacuated due to an earthquake."

"Or get to walk down twenty-five flights of stairs when the air conditioning has short circuited out. That was really fun," she agrees. The elevator arrives, and she quickly boards.

He agrees with a little snort, and slides into it as well. He gets that she's a little mortified about … you know, that, and that he's supposed to keep his distance until she decides to start talking to him about _anything _again. If she ever decides to. But the waiting is just making it more awkward for both of them. He's more than willing to agree to whatever definition of what happened that she wants, and move on. She wants to forget it? Fine. She wants to say it's no big deal (even though, to her, it's clearly become a pretty big deal, if only because she's making it one in her head)? Fine. He'll do that to. If she wants to blow it off? Great. If she wants to talk about it? Not his favorite option, but at this point he'll take it.

"Listen," he starts, and he can't believe he's actually about to start the conversation.

"I want to do more on drones," she interrupts, quickly. "The earthquake doesn't need to be a two-day story."

"I agree," he says. "But we've got Libya, follow up on the illegal immigration announcement, and god-knows-what-else, so let's wait till tomorrow to make a decision. We do the news people **need** to hear, not what we want them to hear. And that applies even when we'd prefer they needed to hear something else."

She cocks her head, a little taken aback. "Sounds good," she says. The elevator opens then, in the lobby, and they get exit.

As they head for the door, he says, "Charlie and I talked about 9/11 coverage today. I wanted to give you a head's up."

"Oh?" she asks. "I thought Mac and Will had stuff pretty much locked down."

"They do. But Charlie's going to ask you tomorrow to co-anchor it tomorrow."

"Oh," she looks a little taken aback.

"With Elliot."

"_Oh_," she says, and he likes this, that she gets things, that she gets them quickly. "Is this Leona? He could apologize. Leona usually can get talked down."

"It's not Leona's decision. Charlie made the call."

"Oh," she says, and her face falls for Will.

"Anyways, I wanted to tell you first, so, you know, you didn't make … that face. That you're making right now. When Charlie tells you."

She pauses. "Thank you."

"You're welcome. Also, I'll be in your ear that night. It wasn't my call, it was Charlie's..."

She nods, and hails a cab. "Sounds good," she steps in.

"Anyways. Good night." She looks at him, nods once, and gets into his cab.

He sighs. Damn. Women. Turning to cross the street, he thumbs over his email again. There's just an inane link to a video of a cat chasing a toy, with the line, "OMG SO FUNNY! LOL" from Maggie's cousin. He deletes it, and raises his hand for a cab.

* * *

And that's a wrap! Would love to hear what you think.


End file.
